There are a few things that “Nutcracker” fans need to know about the new holiday extravaganza “The Nutcracker in 3D,” which, according to the production notes, was “inspired by the beloved ballet.” First, there’s no ballet, though there is a rudimentary waltz on ice skates.

Second, Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” music is chopped up and used as background here and there in Edward Artemiev’s score. Sometimes it receives the further indignity of being turned into songs with lyrics by Tim Rice, the master of high-class doggerel (“Evita,”“Aida”). Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane channeling Einstein in a fright wig and a frightening Viennese accent) sings a ditty called “It’s All Relative” to the tune of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”: “Who’s to say what/Is or is not?/Who writes your plot?/You!”

Last but not least, elements of the ballet and the E.A. Hoffmann story on which it’s based have been subsumed into a new story, set in a candy-cane early-20th-century Vienna, which begins with a young brother and sister, a big Christmas tree and a magical nutcracker before veering into a full-blown Nazi allegory with goose-stepping rats in steel helmets. Things become even more oddly unfestive when we see shuffling lines of people forced to throw their children’s toys into huge piles on the street, an image clearly meant to evoke the Holocaust.

“The Nutcracker in 3D” is the latest curiosity in the career of the 73-year-old Russian-born director Andrei Konchalovsky (“Runaway Train,”“Shy People,”“Tango & Cash”), who also wrote the screenplay with Chris Solimine. It’s a dystopian fantasy masquerading as a children’s story, with weird things popping up, like a bit of kung fu wire work by the Rat King (a hammy John Turturro) or a scene involving an electrocuted shark that appears to be a homage to, or a dig at, Damien Hirst. There’s a surprising level of bloodless violence and a propensity to uncover a bit more of the body of its 12-year-old star, Elle Fanning, than is strictly called for.

On the brighter side, the talented Ms. Fanning gives a capable performance, and Mr. Konchalovsky and his camera and special-effects crews put a few arresting images on screen, including some frightening metal rat-dogs. But even there they fall short of obvious models like Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “City of Lost Children,” and the 3-D treatment adds nothing. (The Viennese scenes, shot on Budapest soundstages, give a new, dreary meaning to “workmanlike.”) Bits and pieces of “Alice in Wonderland,”“The Wizard of Oz” and the “Lord of the Rings” films are thrown into the pot in an attempt to achieve some fairy-tale flavor, but you may find yourself responding most strongly to the occasional recognizable fragment of Tchaikovsky on the soundtrack.

A version of this review appears in print on November 24, 2010, on Page C12 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dystopian Aftertaste To Those Sugarplums. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe